me better than that.”
“It’s the name,” Mom said suddenly. It was the first time she’d spoken since we’d come into the office. “Bennett. Some see that as a good thing. Some don’t.”
“That’s putting it mildly,” Gordo said. “They’d rather take the chance of turning Omega than have Joe as their Alpha.”
By the way Joe sighed, it sounded like they’d had this conversation a few times before. “It’s big, being the Alpha of all. Bigger than I ever thought it would be. There’s only so much Dad could have prepared me for. It took me a long time, but I learned. At least I like to think I did. But then after everything that happened in Caswell, it was like I was starting all over again. I felt so small and big all at the same time. I wrestled with it. I could have stopped them from leaving. I could have forced them to stay. I didn’t.”
“And some already had their minds made up,” Mark said. “Regardless of what else happened, they saw Michelle as their Alpha, the man known as Ezra her witch.”
Kelly didn’t like that. “They should have known better. They saw what he did to Dale, even if they say they didn’t. He had some control over them, and they claim it’s all hazy, like they couldn’t wake up.”
I said, “You don’t believe them.”
He hesitated before shaking his head. “I think they allowed him to do what he wanted and used the excuse of what he did to Robbie as their own. At least the ones who left were honest about it.”
Gavin grabbed the back of my shirt. He didn’t speak. I leaned back slightly, pressing into his hand to let him know I felt him. “Gordo told me about the raven.”
Joe closed his eyes as he leaned back into his chair. “Yeah. That was… I don’t even know what that was.”
“We should have expected it,” Gordo said. “Thomas knew, but not the extent of it or what it meant. He was working off an assumption.” He tilted his head toward Gavin. “Seemed he had a few of those.”
“Did you know about Gavin?” I asked my mother. “Where he went? What Grandad did? That Dad knew where he was?”
“No,” Mom said quietly. “I didn’t. At least not that Thomas went to him. If I’d known, I would have…. I knew your father better than anyone here. Everything he did, he did for a reason, even if the meanings behind his actions are lost to us. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust us. I think it was more that he wanted to keep us safe.”
I felt anger rising from the pit of my stomach, a low thrum that I couldn’t stop. “Because that’s all that mattered to him. Pack. Always pack. He didn’t care who he hurt in the process. Gordo. Mark. Gavin.”
Joe’s eyes flashed open. His eyes were red. “He did the best he could.”
“Did he?” I asked. “Yeah, he was right about Gordo’s tattoos, but did that really mean he needed to leave him behind? And then he went to Gavin, knowing who he was and where he was, and told him about wolves. Witches. Magic. And for what? To tease him with a life he’d never have and just… leave him where he was?”
Gavin whined lowly behind me. It made me want to kill something. I hated that sound coming from him.
“He did what he thought was right,” Mom said quietly. “He made mistakes, some more egregious than others. But you have to remember that he wasn’t much older than Joe when he was made Alpha after Abel was murdered.”
“A circle,” Mark said, shaking his head. “We’re stuck. It’s all happened before, and it’ll all happen again.”
“Unless we break it,” Ox said, and we all looked to him. He still stared out the window, hands behind him.
“How?” I demanded. “Don’t get me wrong here. You came for me, and I couldn’t be more grateful. But we took away the one thing keeping Livingstone in place.”
“What would you have had us do?” Ox asked calmly, and I wanted to shake him, to get him to look at me and fucking deal with this. He was all about the Zen Alpha bullshit, but I needed his fire. I needed him to be as angry as I was. “Leave you where you were? According to you, Livingstone was feeding off Gavin somehow. What if that had killed him?”
“I’m not—”
“You didn’t trust me enough to help you.”
I stopped cold. “That’s